Inside the Star

Afghan interpreter’s family killed by Taliban near Kandahar

Sayed Shah Sharifi fought to come to Canada, saying the Taliban threatened to kill him and his family because he was an interpreter for Canadian forces. This month, five of his relatives were killed by a roadside bomb. Three were children.

Sharif Khan, 5, was seriously injured by a roadside bomb blast that killed three other childen and two women, following threats by the Taliban after their relative Sayed Shah Sharifi, a former combat interpreter for Canadian forces, fled to safety in Toronto.

When Sayed Shah Sharifi’s family heard that distant relatives had been killed in a roadside bomb attack, they decided to pay their condolences to the survivors. On the morning of May 13, seven of them set off from Kandahar for their ancestral village of Maruf, a remote and violent district about 100 kilometres away.

But sometimes in Afghanistan, tragedy begets tragedy. As they reached an area local residents call “horror valley,” their 4x4 vehicle hit a roadside bomb. Five were killed. Two were injured.

The improvised bomb was set up by the Taliban to punish Sharifi for once working as a combat interpreter for the Canadian military in Kandahar.

Sharifi is safe in Canada. Instead the militants took their revenge on his beloved sister, on his brother’s wife, and on his niece and two nephews, aged between 8 months and 4 years. His nephew Sharif Khan, 5, was badly hurt.

“Everything that happens is God’s decision, right? He decides what to do,” said Sharifi, his voice breaking with emotion. “Everybody’s gone. Shafeeqa was my best friend and close sister.”

Toronto has been Sharifi’s adopted home since July. He won a lengthy and public battle with the Canadian government to get a visa on the basis that his life was in danger because of his job as a translator from 2007 to 2010.

The Star wrote extensively about Sharifi’s struggle with Ottawa, which initially rejected his claim under a special visa program set up to help Afghans who showed “individual risk” working for Canadian troops in Kandahar. He was denied after complaining to the Star about long delays and fears he would be killed before reaching safety — insurgents had threatened him and his father because of Sharifi’s work helping foreigners.

Three years after Sharifi left his job, the Taliban followed through on their deadly promise. The message is clear: no matter how long it takes, the militants will exact revenge on anyone associated with foreign military forces or the Afghan government, and on their families.

“My family, they are shopkeepers, college students or high school students, or teenagers or babies. I was the one person working with the military,” Sharifi said. “OK, if you want to kill somebody of my family, I was the one person. Why kill five?”

He blames himself for their deaths.

“I should have stayed home, stayed there with my family, but I ran far from my family,” he said.

Canada withdrew combat soldiers from Afghanistan in 2011. As remaining NATO member states leave the Afghan war one by one — all fighting troops will be gone by the end of next year — insurgents are training their crosshairs on Afghans perceived to be pro-government or pro-foreign forces.

Afghans who are teaching, giving medical help, building roads, policing their communities or translating for foreign soldiers are among those at the mercy of insurgents, as are tribal leaders preaching peace. Last year “anti-government elements,” as the United Nations calls them, killed or injured 1,077 Afghans in a terrifying campaign of targeted killings.

And they are stepping up the pace of assassinations. In the first four months of 2013, preliminary figures show a 46 per cent rise in targeted killings compared with the same period last year, said Georgette Gagnon, representative of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Afghanistan.

“It is a tactic of intimidation and terror,” she said in an interview from Kabul. “Obviously it is a way to get people to support them (anti-government elements) or sit on the fence.”

The weapon of choice in the assassination campaign is the remotely detonated improvised bomb.

Sayed’s brother Ahmed Shah was driving the family’s vehicle when it hit the bomb and survived with minor injuries. Shortly before the explosives went off, he said, he noticed two men on a motorbike following the family for several kilometres. But the road was a busy thoroughfare, so he did not think much of it.

“We did not think it was serious and could not understand why they were behind us, what they were doing,” he said.

Three kilometres from Maruf, the bomb exploded. Shah, a taxi driver, is convinced the explosives were laid out for them on the dusty road.

“Before we reached this area, already two more vehicles had already gone down the same road with no explosion hitting them,” he said. “No other vehicle or people were injured in this incident.”

The explosives ripped through his car. His wife Zilija and their children, Humaira, 4, and Mohammad Younous, 18 months, lay badly injured. Shafeeqa, 22, and her 8-month-old boy Najeebullah were also hit. All five victims bled to death as they waited for emergency services to arrive, he said.

“The casualties were lying on the road for almost one and a half hours with no one to transport them to the health facility or anywhere else,” said Shah. They were eventually evacuated by an international forces helicopter.

His son Sharif Khan was taken to the Mirwais Hospital in Kandahar City where he is recovering from a broken leg and shrapnel wounds.

The dead were taken to Maruf and buried the same day, in accordance with Islamic law.

Two months ago, Sharifi’s brother and father — who recently died of an illness — received threatening phone calls from the militants.

“They said, ‘Your son was working with Canadians and now he has left for Canada,’ meaning, ‘You all have links to the outside and Canadians, so we will see what we do with you,’ ” Shah said.

His family has nowhere to go. The Taliban and their allies control large parts of the south and east.

“If we go to anywhere else in Afghanistan, they can still target us and follow us, so we have no choice except to stay here in Kandahar,” he said. “Besides that, we cannot afford to go anywhere.”

While Sharifi’s devastated family has pulled together in Kandahar to mourn their loss, he grieves alone, far away. Less than 48 hours before the tragedy, Sharifi spoke to Shafeeqa for the last time.

“We made a plan for a family reunion later this year,” he said.

The siblings’ bond was as strong as it was in the days when they walked to school together. Sharifi was willing to risk returning home to see his mother and siblings again. But everyone is too frightened for that now.

“My family doesn’t want me to come and see them,” he said.

Bismillah Khushal is a special correspondent for The Star

For former combat interpreter Sayed Shah Sharifi, the biggest thing to hit home is observing the freedom Torontonians enjoy, such being able wear whatever they wish and go about their daily lives without harrassment or scrutiny.

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